Then I saw the color. And I saw the seal. It wasn't an eagle.
It was a condor, its wings spread over a mountain and a river and a sun, and above it, in gold letters worn soft at the edges, it said REPÚBLICA DEL ECUADOR.
"Hernán," my mother said. "Por favor."
"No." My father didn't look at her. He was looking at me. His eyes were wet, but his voice was steady, steadier than I had ever heard it, the voice he used on the phone with contractors who were trying to cheat him. "No, Rocío. She is going to hear it from us, in this kitchen, and not from a lady in an airport. Or from nobody. Not from a mailbox that never brings anything." He took a breath and held the booklet out to me. "Maya. Take this. Open it. And then we'll tell you everything. Everything. I promise you, everything."
I took it. It was lighter than I expected. Cheaper, somehow. The cover was a little warped, as if it had gotten damp once and dried. I opened it.
There was a baby on the first page.
She was looking slightly off to one side, the way babies do in pictures when somebody is waving a toy just out of frame. She had a lot of black hair sticking straight up and a little gold stud in each ear and a sour, suspicious expression, as if she had been woken up for this and did not approve. I knew that expression. I had seen it in the mirror every morning of my life before coffee.
QUIZHPE ZHUNIO, MAYA ALEJANDRA.
Fecha de nacimiento: 14 NOV 2008.
Lugar de nacimiento: CUENCA, AZUAY.
I read it three times. Then I read it a fourth time, as if it were a word problem with a trick in it, as if I might find the place where the numbers didn't add up and get partial credit.
"This is wrong," I said. "This is—I was born at Danbury Hospital. I was born at Danbury Hospital, you told me, you said Papi drove you there in the snow in the Corolla, and the heater was broken, and you said—"
"I said it," my mother said. "I said it."
"Turn the page," my father said quietly.
I turned the pages. Most of them were blank, pale green with a faint pattern of hummingbirds in the paper that I would have thought was beautiful on any other day. Then, near the middle, there was a visa. A real one, a full page, with a hologram that flashed when I tilted it toward the window, and the same baby, older now, still suspicious, in the corner. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Visa type B1/B2. And on the facing page, a purple stamp, smudged, with a date in it. SEP 21 2010. NEW YORK, NY. JFK.